When I pour my favorite imperial stout, like Founders Breakfast Stout or Stone Russian Imperial Stout, and all I see coming out of the bottle is what I can only describe as an oil-like substance, how do I achieve that? Is it specialty grains that add body or specialty grains that add dark color? Or is it a combination of both? I recently made an oatmeal imperial stout and the color left me a little disappointed because it wasn't as dark or thick as I was hoping. Here is my recipe:

The final gravity was only 1.035 (which was probably due to me not using enough 2-row malt) so I had to keg it, but it was still kind of thin. Any suggestions on how to make a more thick and black imperial stout? Or is the problem simply that I didn't reach my target final gravity and the alcohol adds to the color and mouthfeel?

You can add malto dextrin to the keg. It will add body and not much else. With your recipe I'd think more 2-row to convert more flaked barley would be all you need to add more body. With a FG that high I think you might also want to add some sugar, but there is some contradiction to that. With two pounds of dark malt I don't know how you could need more color. Maybe add a touch of Roasted barley.

If you didn't mash the flaked oats and barley, then you might as well not have added them. I want to brew the Founder's Breakfast Stout clone I have but since it calls for 22 oz. of flaked oats, I will be looking to do my first partial mash!

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I love the Founders offerings and Old Rasputin, so this is my favorite beer I've brewed to date. Already planning on brewing it again this winter so I can give the next batch a full year of aging before tapping into it.

I love the Founders offerings and Old Rasputin, so this is my favorite beer I've brewed to date. Already planning on brewing it again this winter so I can give the next batch a full year of aging before tapping into it.

Just curious, how much wort do you have when you brew this recipe? I would like to brew something like this but only have a 10 gallon brew kettle. I batch sparge so with such a high gravity brew I would have to boil more than 10 gallons of wort to get good efficiency. Are there other methods of sparging that yield less gallons of wort but still get good efficiency or do I just need a bigger brew kettle and have to boil for a really long time?

That's what I was thinking too, but I kegged it and had some yesterday and it was just not what I was hoping for, maybe I'm just expecting too much from it.

What was your starting gravity? I suppose if it was really high as well and you ended up with a high attenuation level (above 80% or so) that it could feel a little thin when considering the high amount of alcohol. I think a high level of carbonation could also leave it feeling a bit too thin.